Boring.

I just realized that my whole plan, my whole idea for making 2008 a great year, makes me an incredibly boring person. And that I am very attached, in a backwards way, to being not boring, despite avowedly celebrating and enjoying the boring things in life, and the boring everyperson. I was pretty excited and prideful of how well I did at not being boring last year, and if I really examine it, prideful of the social cache that lends. And clearly part of my funk right now is about not being able to let go of that need to be above-boring. And then I read this by that guy who wrote the Hardcore Zen book. It amused me a great deal that he chose to mention a particular Mike Nesmith quote...

People hate their ordinary lives. We want something better. This, our day to day life of drudgery and work, is boring, dull and ordinary, we think. But someday, someday... There's an episode of The Monkees* where Mike Nesmith says that when he was in high school he used to walk out on the school's empty stage with a guitar in his hands thinking "Someday, someday." Then he said that now (now being 1967, at the height of the Monkees fame) he walks out on stage in front of thousands of fans and thinks "Someday, someday." That's the way life is. It's never going to be perfect. Whatever "someday" you imagine, it will ever come. Never. No matter what it is. No matter how well you build your fantasy or how carefully you follow all the steps necessary to achieve it. Even if it comes true exactly the way you planned, you'll end up just like Mike Nesmith. Someday, someday... I guarantee you.

Having a boring routine, something that was so hard last year, i realized over that time is very valuable to me. Practice, focus, routine, these are all boring things. Boring things that help some people live great or enlightened lives. I do see that my campaign for myself is a little reactionary, and I will try to keep that in mind.

I guess what I'm saying is that things are not exactly going to be a thrill ride around here, I think. :)